The Toronto Maple Leafs fired head coach Sheldon Keefe on Thursday after another first-round loss — this time to the Boston Bruins. Keefe was the fifth longest-tenured bench boss in the league after being hired in November of 2019.
Since the end of the 2022-23 season, 17 head coaches have been fired, let go, resigned, or retired. The Washington Capitals were among those teams as Peter Laviolette departed the club just days after the team’s final game in April of 2023.
The Capitals hired their next leader, Spencer Carbery, just over a month later on May 30, 2023. With the league turnover, Carbery is now the 14th longest-tenured coach in the NHL despite being in his position for less than a year.
| Team | Coach | Start date |
|---|---|---|
| TBL | Jon Cooper | March 25, 2013 |
| PIT | Mike Sullivan | December 12, 2015 |
| COL | Jared Bednar | August 25, 2016 |
| CAR | Rod Brind’Amour | May 8, 2018 |
| MTL | Martin St. Louis | February 9, 2022 |
| VGK | Bruce Cassidy | June 14, 2022 |
| PHI | John Tortorella | June 17, 2022 |
| DAL | Pete DeBoer | June 21, 2022 |
| FLA | Paul Maurice | June 22, 2022 |
| CHI | Luke Richardson | June 27, 2022 |
| DET | Derek Lalonde | June 30, 2022 |
| BOS | Jim Montgomery | July 1, 2022 |
| VAN | Rick Tocchet | January 22, 2023 |
| WSH | Spencer Carbery | May 30, 2023 |
Teams have hired 12 coaches after Washington brought in Carbery. Additionally, one team, the Los Angeles Kings, has an interim head coach and five other jobs are presently vacant.
“It’s insanity,” Dallas Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said Thursday per NHL.com. “We coach in an age where everyone talks about the modern athlete, building relationships in order to coach them. How do you do that with that kind of turnover? It’s like going on a date and getting married and divorced before the appetizers show up. I don’t get it, but that’s the world we live in.”
DeBoer has held five different jobs since starting his NHL career as a bench boss before the 2008-09 campaign. His longest stint with a club came with the San Jose Sharks for 361 games which spanned almost four and a half seasons.
Four of the most successful teams in the league over the last decade, the Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins, Colorado Avalanche, and Carolina Hurricanes, have hung on to their head coaches for the longest amount of time. None of them have hired someone new during the 2020s.
“I think it’s the parity in the league, expectations of every team seem to be really high,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said Thursday.” Pressure gets put on the coaches to be able to get their teams to perform at the highest level. It’s tough to see when you see guys get let go and have to move and start job hunting.
“We’ve been fortunate with our ownership group and our management team to be really patient with our group. So, obviously, I’m appreciative of that. You see certain teams around the league that have been able to keep their staff and coaches in place having success. Hopefully, more teams do that here moving forward.”
The NHL as a whole tends to retread the same group of 40-or-so coaches and refuses to take chances on new faces. Current Hershey Bears head coach Todd Nelson has been a victim of that culture despite his success at the AHL level as have many coaches from overseas leagues.
One prime example of that occurred this week when the Ottawa Senators brought in former Vancouver Canucks and New Jersey Devils head coach Travis Green. Green got the job in Ottawa despite having a career record well below .500 (141-159-35). The coach the Senators fired, DJ Smith, has amassed a similar career record of 131-154-32.
Another comes with the Buffalo Sabres in Lindy Ruff, who is now in his second head coaching stint with the team a decade after being fired midseason in 2012-13.
